SEO is a term you may hear a lot–most likely in e-mails from strangers offering it to you for lots and lots of dollars. But… do you actually know what SEO is?

The Basics

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.  In “normal people speak” it means “getting Google to love me”.

The people offering to “make you #1 on Google” are offering magic.  There is no quick and easy way to do that.  Those ways are known as “black hat” techniques.  There are, however, ways to do things “legally”.

Search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, and others, look at your website to find out what it’s about.  The first way they do this is by reading what you’ve written.  When you write pages on your site write them as if you were talking to one of your customers.  Write for people to read, not search engines.

When doing that writing, however, there are a few tips.

• Use keywords, but don’t over-use them.  Keywords are important words that describe your business.  Your company name, what you sell or do, the brands you carry, etc.  You want to mention these things a few times, but not too many.  If you “keyword load”, the search engines will think you’re trying to cheat.  The experts suggest that it’s best to use a keyword 3-4 times on a page.
• Write for your customers.  When it comes right down to it, you’re not interested in Google or Bing or Yahoo.  You’re interested in real people who will buy things from you.  You know your business.  You know your customers.  Talk to them online the way you  would talk to them in your store.
• The title of your page is one of the first things that the SEs look at–they are very important.  The main pages should have 1-word titles that people recognize.  For lower pages, pick titles that are short but descriptive.

The SEO Plug-in

All-in-One SEO Plugin

For many of you, we’ve installed the All-in-One SEO plug-in.  This is a tool that gives you a large degree of control over how the search engines  see you.

The admin panel of the plug-in has many advanced settings.  On each page, however, there is a set of tools to help that page show up better.

• Title This is the title of the page.  It’s what shows up in the header of your browser.  It’s also what the search engines see as the name of the page.
• Description Many search engines show a description of the pages they find.  This is what they will see.
• Keywords This is a minor aspect–ignored by several search engines, but still worth while.  This section deals with what are what are known as “meta keywords”.  A lot of people will tell you that meta tags are ultra-important. They’re wrong.  Meta keywords have been abused so heavily, that many search engines ignore them completely.  They won’t hurt you, but they may not help you.  Don’t spend more than a minute or two dealing with this section.
• Title Attribute This one is a bit sneaky.   When you hover your mouse over the link to the page, this is what shows up.  The search engines see it and add it to their listing for your site.
• Menu Label Normally, the page title is what shows up in the navigation menu.  The Menu Label feature changes that.

When it comes down to it, there is no magic wand that makes you number one on Google.  Just like in the business world, making it to the top requires hard work.